Great Luke - great memory
Where is this great city?
The leader is still well remembered in Velikiye Luki. They remember that under him the city - by the way, the most important railway junction, was the regional center. Whoever has not forgotten the Soviet era knows what a big difference there was in the social sphere, in supply, in education and medicine, between a simple provincial town and the capital of a region, and even more so of a republic or an autonomy.
The Velikoluksky region was abolished with a stroke of the pen by Stalin's heir and the very dubious reformer N. S. Khrushchev (Acts of Nikita the Wonderworker). And this is not forgotten in Velikiye Luki either. A monument to Khrushchev will certainly not be erected there. But I.V. Stalin decided to deliver.
Recently, in this center of the southern region of the Pskov region, a solemn ceremony was held to open a monument to Stalin, the commander-in-chief of the Soviet army, which made a decisive contribution to the victory over fascism in World War II.
The eight-meter monument was made on the initiative of the Russian Knight Foundation for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. The event itself immediately became the subject of special attention of the liberal press. There are many critics, but almost all officialdom, both television and network, with rare exceptions, preferred to remain silent on this matter.
Well, it’s better for many people to keep silent about the monument, and about Stalin himself, if they are not able to say anything intelligible. Meanwhile, this monument is also a kind of symbol of gratitude to Stalin for the creation in the mid-40s of the vast Velikie Luki region.
Great Luke. Stalin Square
It should not be forgotten that even before this, and even more so immediately after the creation of the region, the authorities of the Leningrad and Pskov regions claimed many districts of the new region. First of all, because even before the war they were not depressive, as many are today, but developed ahead of the highest rates of the first pre-war five-year plans. At the exit from the war, Velikie Luki and its environs, despite the devastation, also did not lag behind.
The author of the monument is sculptor Mikhail Krasilnikov, a graduate of the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Glazunov. The figure of the Generalissimo was installed in front of the main entrance to the Velikoluksky Mikron plant, which is the leading Russian manufacturer of shelving and related equipment, including dual-use equipment.
“It was supposed that the monument would be erected in Volgograd, but because of the regional authorities, this did not work out. Three years later, they were able to erect a monument on the territory of the Velikoluksky plant, ” - clarified for the press the deputy general director of the Russian Knight Foundation, documentary filmmaker Vladimir Parshikov.
In the beginning there was a word
The head of the board of directors of the Mikron plant Boris Karakaev, People's Artists of Russia Yuri Nazarov and Boris Galkin, Honored Artist of Russia Maria Shukshina, co-chair of the Zinoviev Club of the Rossiya Segodnya media group Olga Zinovieva, and. O. Head of the Russian Knight Foundation Ivan Ivanov, Vice Admiral Valery Dorogin, other public figures, veterans of the armed forces of the USSR and the Russian Federation.
Noteworthy is the speech of Maria Shukshina, which today is subjected to almost mocking "comments" in many publications and on a number of TV channels. And it's quite clear why:
“... The opening of the monument,” noted Maria Shukshina, “thanks to the efforts of the Russian Knight Foundation and the leadership, the labor collective of the Mikron plant, is a tribute to a great man, slandered and slandered. This is a tribute to the great statesman who was able to resist the external and internal enemy. No, perhaps in stories The state of the Russian man is more slandered than Joseph Stalin. And, of course, Tsar Ivan the Terrible, as symbols of the fight against the fifth column. Vivid symbols of this struggle.
In the 1920s - early 1940s of the last century, the Velikoluksky region was divided between the Leningrad, Smolensk and Novgorod regions, and most of this region was part of the Leningrad region. But a special research group created by the USSR Council of Ministers came to the conclusion that, for economic and administrative reasons, it is advisable to single out the Velikoluksky region as a separate region.
This happened in the spring and summer of 1944, shortly after the final breakthrough of the blockade of Leningrad in January of the same 1944. At first, the main defendants in the notorious "Leningrad case" objected to this, but in vain.
The borders are not closed
On August 22, 1944, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the Formation of the Velikie Luki Region as part of the RSFSR” approved the submission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (August 16, 1944) on the formation of the Velikiye Luki Region with the center in the city of Velikiye Luki.
Its territory is almost 45 thousand square meters. km - exceeded the territory of Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland. But Khrushchev's post-Stalin "innovations" touched not only the now well-known history of Crimea's ownership. First - Russia, and then - Ukraine.
The redrawing of borders also took place in the European Non-Black Earth Region of the RSFSR, and the most “bright” example of this is the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of October 2, 1957 on the abolition of the Velikiye Luki region. This decision was taken on an initiative put forward by the authorities of the Pskov region in 1956.
Characteristically, the initiative was supported by the leadership of the Leningrad region, influential in the USSR and, especially, in the RSFSR. The position of the “Leningraders” was not surprising, since Velikiye Luki and Pskov were previously part of that region.
As a result, the city of Velikiye Luki and the areas adjacent to it were included in the Pskov region (formed on August 23, 1944), and the eastern part of the region became part of the Kalinin region (since 1991 it has been the Tver region). Some regional districts were abolished or "designated" to be transferred to the Novgorod region.
The proposals of a number of former employees of the administration of the abolished region in the mid-60s - early 70s to restore this region to its former borders were rejected from the threshold in Pskov and, accordingly, in the central bodies of the RSFSR. So the region remained not only abolished, but also, just in case, divided between neighboring regions ...
In a word, people in Velikiye Luki remember that it was in the last Stalinist decade that the vast and economically significant Velikie Luki region was created and existed for more than ten years. Well, the Stalin monument itself on the Mikron is a clear confirmation of this.
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